FineArt Sector - Biographies - Ahmed Abdel Ghany Mohamed Salem

* Visual Poetic Rhymes
- Artist Ahmed Abdel Ghany succeeded in capturing the memories that he longs to whenever he want to fill himself with life. Yet, he did not recall them to be portrayed in a painting, he rather depicted how warm they are, addressing our eyes and emotions.Despite not seeing the human figure in all the paintings of the exhibition, You can hear sound of the wood under your feet when you see it in one of the paintings. You can smell the popular meals and miss the warm atmosphere. When you see the oven, the dilapidated pan, the coffee pot, and the shoes moistened with the sweat of its possessors, you see mothers of the golden age. You look around and remember many of the memories that we as well as Ahmed loved.Your eyes keep looking at the old decorated tile spaces that he chose to revive the spirit of the place through the effects and interactions of time. By coming closer to the painting to recognize the material used, you wonder: Is it a color or he used some of a natural motives and give it a function in the painting theme?You discover his creative ability tricking you with the use of acrylic colors and paste on wooden slabs, using light and shadow to have a philosophical presence within each artwork.Ahmed controlled his vocabulary that once you see, you sense the life. Despite many artists handled this vocabulary, most of them handled its fine expression but the artist here added spiritual and humanitarian description through his consciousness and his sense of them to narrate what is beyond the form, and to activate your visual memory to what is beyond the aesthetics of the form. And I think that this is his main artistic project.From the perspective of the artist, the painting become a mysticism case in an attempt to court our memory. His vocabulary and symbols have philosophical connotations presenting a new fine art text trying to establish a conscious and promising project. He brings us back to fertile life rituals which are full of cultural accumulations. Despite the absence of the human figure, you feel the life with all its energy charged with love, clamor, agitation and excitement. Colors and formation were harmonious with what the artist would like to present: ideas and philosophies reveal manifestations of artistic scenes combined with intimacy and adoration.Paintings have chromatic and shading diversity that gives the feeling of being visual poetic rhymes which turn us to the careful reading of the motif, the symbol, the shape, the artistic performance and functions of color and its aesthetics within the fine art world.
Sami El-Belshi
Radio and TV 2010

Ahmed Abdel Ghani: Nostalgia for the Past ..Taught as Fine Art and
Created as Paintings
- The audience of Dr. Ahmed Abdul Ghani Egyptian fine art exhibition thinks at first glance that he entered from a small hole in the roof of an old house in Cairo. if he/she takes another step, he/she makes sure that he/she in a gallery among paintings of an art gallery trying to prevent himself/herself from touching the first painting coming across to make sure if what he/she sees is a tile floor sits quietly on hanging paintings on the hall walls or it is a visual trick. The artist soon to catch the pioneers of the exhibition and dispel their bewilderment with illustration words written by the artist in the middle of the hall `the whole artworks produced of acrylic on wood and other materials`.
- `The Lure of the Past,` is the title of the exhibition, in which the artist returns to the archaic period of Cairo time using traditional materials. His imagination gave him a vast area of innovation where the audience of the exhibition is held in an elevated area to see the artworks underneath him as it like flying above a cloud. The audience sees people lives in their homes without a roof or as if it is the roof of the house itself. `I had to draw from a high level because I used the old floor tiles as a key element in the painting, so I had to show the other elements as you see the scene from the top. The presence of any element in a side perspective will lack the rhythm of the painting` The artist says about that.
- `The exhibition is considered a study of the past. I try to restore old themes of life. After old doors and windows were the hero of my previous exhibition, I looked for forms of floor ` tiles` at this exhibition to use it with the painting as an essential element, revolves around the idea of the exhibition. I have tried simulate the tiles by painting and carving on wood to highlight the details, because it is difficult to use real tiles in the artwork because of its too heavy weight making it difficult to carry or display on the wall` Abdel Ghani said.The artist adopted a decorative way repeating floor `tile` stereotype which was known in the early last century, and using paste to highlight the outcrops in the doors, walls or home furniture. He paid a careful attention to the fine details to match the real with a high degree. The touch of object surfaces, veins of wood, folded papers, the shiny knife blade, children toys, crumbling doors and windows and obsolescence walls and the reflection of things on each other or on surroundings are appeared.
- The fine arts critic Dr. Mustafa El-Razzaz said presenting the exhibition: artist Ahmed Abdel-Ghani selected in his exhibition to topple laws and sediments stabilized in the conscience of contemporary painters. At this art, expression and constructed compositions dignity is raised while all decoration and repeatedly based units come down to the minimum levels as painters do not consider excessive craft culture which imitates the real enthusiastically, like what Spaniards Rococo painters did in the eighteenth century.
- `If you`re close to the experience of the artist Ahmed Abdel Ghani and following up its rings and its transformations, this exhibition will attract you unprecedentedly. Those who figured out the invitation or saw the poster suffered exclamation and wondered: Is this the one?`. El-Razzaz added In fact, the artist rebelled against painting blocks in one hand, and adopted the hyper-realism on the other hand. He did not link this and that to the previous creative experiences except in the nostalgia tendency of the visual environment which Cairo people accustomed to in the early to the middle of the last century. He formed the unpainted data tactfully and imaginatively with his new style of painting which opens a way in the Egyptian contemporary painting art.

Mohammed `Awaad
Al-Rai - 2010

Great Nostalgia is the Best Initiation for the New Year

- With all great nostalgia, artist Dr. Ahmed Abdel Ghani brings us back to evoke its pages and live its atmosphere again through 18 huge paintings. Exhibits represent a state of intimacy refusing alienating and obeying to all what is western. His brush rebelled on our cold daily life patterns in a serious attempt to search for the lost Egyptian identity under the feet of modern technology and the painful physical reality spiral which surrounds us and imposes its presence strongly on the finer feelings, the vocabulary of our daily life and our humanity relationship.
- The artist used the place, the walls and dilapidated old floor slabs with its repeated decorative units as a base and a welcomed carpet where the excessive old vocabulary of simple things scattered here and there randomly and spontaneously are moving above its surfaces. This generates a state of warmth, amiability and beautiful chaos missing inside our rooms and our closed modern homes today.
- He evokes `the mule`, `the clog`, the doors, windows, dilapidated wood, Egyptian oriental basket, the coffee pot, children `marbles` old pans and bowls, Al-Houn - a wooden pot with a wooden handle, the backgammon, hot Egyptian bread and other elements, symbols and life tools in his artworks from the past century. It seems that he turns the clock back and evokes capably the features of the beautiful time, its people, breath, welcoming, breadth and the simplicity and the spontaneous of its people and population. Despite the absence of people we feel their movement, breath and their influence on the place.
- We almost are swaying with Thuma - Umm Kalthum - voice, songs of Abdul Wahab and droning with Nightingale - `Abd el-Halim Hafez - Shadia and Sabah. The screams and laughter of the children and the noise of people in the narrow streets and neighbors penetrate our ears in addition to other feelings and fine sensations which we miss in the crowded life.
- Newly, he expressed his vision through a perspective, angles and vertical and light projections that have a magic effect on the place and things. This created a state of uniqueness and dazzle revived our longing and nostalgia for the old days, the warmth of the bosom of the walls and doors and our connection to neighbors and other authentic Egyptian customs and traditions.
- Color and light helped to deepen the sense of antiquity and the visual environment, which was characterized by Cairo community in the early last century till the seventies. Despite the realistic of things, the wisdom and imagination of the artist succeeded in taming and presenting in modern innovative way representing a breakthrough for the Egyptian Fine Art.

Thuraya Darwish
Al Akhbar Newspaper - 2010

Lure of the Past, by Ahmed Abd El-Ghani,
opens a new horizon in the Contemporary Egyptian Painting
- Lure of the Past, an exhibition has been held recently by artist Ahmed Abd El-Ghani at Gezira Art Center in El-Zamalek. Ahmed Abdel Ghani is an abstract expressionist artist, who combines between geometry and organism while depicting cosmic scenes with the academic light effects, yet with modern kinetic compositions. In recent years, He was obsessed with the experience of the black and white painting and sometimes with glowing red, then he used battens of decaying wood and cement pastes in order to portray the popular things invoking nostalgia for the past.
- `In his exhibition`s catalog, the creative artist challenged some traditions of his artistry.`, Dr. Mostafa El-Razzaz talking about artist Ahmed Abd El-Ghani. `The artist chose to leave behind the rules and regulations settled in the sentiment of the contemporary painters. In art of painting, the expression and combined structural compositions are highly ranked, while goes down to the minimum rank all that is decorative and composed of repetitive units.`, explained El-Razzaz.
- He also added: `Painters give no consideration to the culture of excessive artistry in imitating reality, like the Rococo-Spanish painters did, especially in the eighteenth century. In their paintings, they excessively simulated reality; they emulated textures of the surfaces, veins of the marble, even the folding paper, the shiny knife blade, the old walls, also the reflection of the painted things on each other, as well as on the surrounding glasses, or the reflection of the whole scene on a distant mirror. This trend had declined among the European modern painters before it came back again under the name of `the excessive realism`. Rebelled against the traditions of painting, Abd El-Ghani adopted the stereotyped repetitive ornamental tiles at the beginning of the last century on one hand, and on the other hand adopted the excessive realism of `Trompe l`œil`, and the only thing linking between them and his past creative experiences is the `nostalgic` longing to the past and the visual environment accustomed by the Cairenes since the beginning of the last century until the mid-century.
- With his experience and imagination, he tamed all the non-pictorial elements for his new pictorial style, which opens a new horizon in the contemporary Egyptian painting. An experience that is worth the attentive contemplation to enjoy and show the appreciation that it deserves.
- At his last exhibition, his paintings earned the admiration of all those who attended as his nostalgia for the past he expressed at the antique tiles and furniture as the worn carpets and the dining table that brings the family members around and
beside them are the old shoes and slippers which the artist excelled in portraying them, especially in using different materials on wood that expressed his sincere feeling towards these elements and symbols.
- Born in 1962, Abd El-Ghani graduated from Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University in 1986, and received his MA and then his PhD in Painting in 2000. He is Assistant Professor at Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University and Director of the Fine Arts Programs at Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He has held 15 solo-exhibitions since 1982 and participated in about 50 local group exhibitions. He also participated in international group exhibitions as The Contemporary Egyptian Art Exhibition, Qatar 1989, The Contemporary Egyptian Art Exhibition, Mexico, 1995, The 2nd International Imagining the Book Biennale, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2005, and The 10th International Cairo Biennale, 2006. He obtained many local prizes.

Nagwa El-Ashri
Al-Ahram Newspaper, February 2010

Abd El-Ghani Goes Against the Tide
- The creative artist challenged some traditions of his artistry. In his exhibition at Gezira Art Center in January, 2010, Abd El-Ghani chose to go against the rules established in the sentiment of the Egyptian painters. In the art of painting, the rank of expression and structural compositions is highly classified, while goes down to the minimum rank all that is ornamental and composed of repetitive units. Also, painters give no consideration to the culture of excessive artistry in imitating reality, like the Rococo-Spanish painters did, especially in the eighteenth century, under the name `Trompe l`œil` as Lewis Gino Mendez`s paintings.
- In these artworks, the artist excessively simulated reality; he emulated textures of the surfaces, veins of the marble, even the folding paper, the shiny knife blade, the old walls, also the reflection of the painted things on each other, as well as on the surrounding glasses, or the reflection of the whole scene on a distant mirror. This trend had declined among the European modern painters before it came back again under the name of `Hyper Realism` by the American artist Andrew Wyeth in the forties of the past century. Also, it was widely spread among painters of the murals placed in the great American cities, under the title of return of the `Trompe l`œil` in the seventies by painters like Werren Johnson.
- In the mid-nineties, the Hyper Realism spread in the artworks of some painters as Hoklix, in New York and the West Coast of the US as a reaction to the Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual and Minimalist Art. In the eighties, the trend of the extremely realistic three-dimensional artworks was emerged at the hands of Hanson and De Andrea, in which the artist was more concerned about the visual details of the shape, especially the drawn elements and their reflections, the light dispersion or the highlighting, the mild and the dry, the poured, the skin pores and the gleam of the eyes.
This trend was considered as a reaction to the Abstract Expressionism, but it just faded away, introducing the art of painting to modern stylistic manifestations, ideas and concepts, that are only threatened by the dominance of a pattern or a style.
`If you were close enough to witness the transformations of artist Abd El-Ghani`s experience, you would be extremely astonished by the exhibition. Those we saw the invitation or the poster on the internet were surprised and said: this is that !!
- Actually, Abd El-Ghani rebelled against the traditions of painting; on one hand, he used the stereotyped repetitive decorative tiles appeared in the beginning of the last century, and on the other hand he adopted the excessive realism of the `Trompe l ` il `, and the only thing linking between them and his past creative experiences is the `nostalgic` longing to the past and the visual environment accustomed by the Cairenes since the beginning of the last century until the mid-century.
- But, with his experience and imagination, he tamed all the non-pictorial elements for his new pictorial style, which opens a new horizon in the contemporary Egyptian painting. An experience that is worth the attentive contemplation to enjoy and show the appreciation that it deserves .

Dr. Mostafa El-Razzaz

The River of Art...Ahmed Abdel Ghany

- Gezira Art Center is distinguished by an honest, conscious and cultured leadership from the very beginning when Amr Ibrahim palace has become a real lighthouse through a development plan spanned for years.
- Mrs. Susan Mubarak has inaugurated such artistic cultural establishment where the first museum of Islamic ceramics in the world was founded, which is also a museum of Said Al Sadr the pioneer of ceramics art in Egypt.
- After the modernization of the center`s art galleries, a museum for sculpture was added to the garden to be the first open air museum for sculpture.
- It was parallel to the sculpture museum in Aswan. I am proud that these landmarks were achievements of the Fine Art Sector under my presidency at that time. The artist Mohammed Rizk, General Supervisor of Gezira Art Center, has persevered to present marks in the Egyptian Contemporary art from the youth and adults as well. This is a penetrating vision which motivates the intellectual and creative activity.
- The month before last, an exhibition by the artist Ahmed Abdel Ghany was displayed in the main hall of the center. It was a surprise because of this wonderful serious experience which I had contemplated deeply for many reasons:
- First: the artist`s will and his clinging to the original art based on civilizational and cultural reference. This display and the other similar earnest ones are considered a tempest which confronts the frivolous creativity seen in some galleries. Such creativity founded on occidental reference one hundred percent, comes from foreign institutions which seem as if they impose the identity of works which must be done by some artists, in intellectual and technical terms.
- This happens because of the absence of strong deterrent criticism facing all orientations by knowledge and logic, confronting the degeneracy in art, classifying the artistic works, so as to emerge the valuable works and uncover the bad ones. The exhibition of Ahmed Abdel Ghany comes as a wonderful example which has left new and important mark in the Egyptian art.
- The artist Ahmed Abdel Ghany was born in Cairo, 1962. He graduated from the faculty of Art Education in 1986. He obtained the PhD of philosophy in Art Education, painting specialization, in 2000. He is an assistant professor at the same faculty, and a manager of fine arts programs in Bibliotheca Alexandrina since 2002 till now. He participated in many different collective exhibitions.
- He belongs to a generation contributed with their creativity to establish the Youth Salon. From the first moment, when contemplating the exhibition as a whole, his artistic vision rested on an Islamic art reference is revealed.
- The building of forms on the space of paintings depends on a perspective slide in the visible section of them, so that the artist presents varied, united and cohesive combinations, act of structural engineering on this space replete with special sense and climate in spite of the high quality and the homogeneous details.
- The artist, with high intelligence, has created a human environment with light which is penetrating through angles and corners, making a kind of overlap and harmony between the forms.
- Here, it is shown the ability of the artist and his mastery through his own specific world, by making a color system which carries the beautiful contradiction between history and the contemporary and modernity of his vision. This is a difficult formula which many artists try to apply but they could not achieve any positive results, and this is because the artist lacks the culture and the awareness of the magnitude of the creative interconnection throughout its prolonged phases.
- His stars and their geometric successive ones attract our attention with Sufic tranquility, as if Man is sitting behind light ray which is penetrating from Al-mashrabiyas to play a light symphony with the sun movement.
- This is another depth which the artist has not called, but it is a hybrid in his artistic vision with its intellectual dimensions.
- This creative collection is considered a new phase in the artist`s career, which confirms really his high status.
- The artist Ahmed Abdel Ghany has adopted a new approach which he can develop, isolate or reduce; it is a prolonged and incandescent phase.
- The Egyptian art movement is badly in need of more original artistic creativity, reformation and setting the compass of creativity.

Dr. Ahmed Nawar
Al-Akhbar Newspaper - 2010

Science of Survival and Imagining Nightmares
- We miss much of what must be seen in this exhibition, when seeing the recent exhibition of artist Ahmed Abdel-Ghani from a pure artistic aesthetic perspective.
- The exhibition is a silent deep message from a quiet and balanced person with an endless smile disclosing his good conscience and his nightmarish apprehensions about the fate of modern man and the obstacles that prevent his serious effort to build and develop a civilization and the struggle for (survival) which became abundance that he dreams about.
- The world turned into two forces: a force majeure and a powerless one that awaits for its assault; the evidences of the brutal oppression to whom his/her turn is: the high anxiety for those whom expect it.
- Ahmed Abdel-Ghani saw the self-destruction of humanity from the perspective of the end of the truth and utopia; the dream of survival remains as the ambition of the first human of which he started with.
- Is this artist pessimistic? Or we lost our sensitivity because of what we hear and see like who lives in a pen his only hope to not be his turn at the slaughtering ceremony?
- Ahmed Abdel-Ghani showcases his nightmares from a perspective that is similar to the concept of the doomsday: the novel that became a successful movie - Acalipes - which shows the end of humankind after the great atomic energy as he turns to ash and his edifices, walls and acquisitions are charred, solidified and broken into parts; archaeological remains depicted the sunset of human kingdom on earth reflecting blurred allusions on being a lively ambitious construction.
- Although the motes of the dust were burnt, they reflected a civilization, art and life that were flourishing and glowing; the stones and the metal blocks were decayed but they kept regular scratches, spirals on precious stones, rusty remnants of conjoining of edifice, twisted metals of excess heat, spheres kept their beauty despite the destruction, erosion and crack occurred, and clouds of smoke were petrified as a silent evidence of destruction. Rust, sacrifice, corrosion and cracking were translated as `honorable person of a nation reduced to disgrace`.
- In the exhibition, another collection of large paintings with bright colors, red and white, does not quite belong to this dramatic collection; it is manifestations of fine art language and its aesthetics.

Mostafa El-Razzaz

At Ahmed Abdel-Ghani Exhibition at Museum of Ahmed Shawki…
Stream of Light with Face of Reality
- Reality remains always as the origin of the cosmic structure including constants and variables; the tapestry of senses are engaged to imagine the scene through bounds of time and space realized by mind at swift hidden receiving moment; the soul remains eager to a hidden hunt in the heart of what is seen; its unlimited energy is generated to satisfy its strong uncovered desire geographically. night and day, heaven and earth, and the unseen and the seen are examples of antitheses.
- The beginning of creativity involves this concept of existence to be the inspiration to the greatest figures throughout the history of human; Ahmed Abdel-Ghani pleased to be latent in this circle holding balance tools of mind and soul through more than twenty artworks presented recently at the Museum of Ahmed Shawki. He combines the two techniques of drawing and painting, acrylic on toile, in addition to using other materials such as cement, scaffolding and nails at the core of the picture formation.
- Abdel-Ghani depends at his compositions on simulating of visual elements from daily life such as windows, doors, wall and floor tiles, tree roots, and plastic and iron pipes. When dealing with these elements, he tends to reach a concrete detailed structure with bright colors at the lowest level of reduction of color facing the highest points of form details attracting the recipient to the aspects of the scene to be engaged with parts of the scene then to the whole scene and vice versa.
- This may lead the artist to another area of contrast where the texture appears through combining the strictness of the design and the great stability of the material on the surface. This can be found at the artworks that combine visually between the paste of cement and the scratches of the scaffolding as tangible elements in the artwork structure; there is separating structure of the bright floor tile while the farther spot on the contrast curve at the artist`s artworks is represented through the confluence of the light and dimness as a strong connection in the spinning universe.
- When following precisely these two opposing forms, you find that he uses the black color in the formulation of the dark vocabulary such as the window shutter, old wood and doors featuring glamorous aesthetic styles that are inlaid with the formations of iron decoration, plastic pipes, tree roots and iron rings; this embodies a mix of diverse styles that enrich the surface of the picture and take root in the artist handicraft mastery.

Mohammed Kamal
Cairo 4/4/2006